


Thorned Beauty

by Prim_the_Amazing



Series: crumbling mansions and the people trapped in them [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dark Fairy Tale Elements, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:27:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26445589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing
Summary: There is a small, quaint town, and overlooking it is a hill. On top of that hill, is a vast, sprawling estate. It is an overgrown, abandoned thing, which is strange for how obviously beautiful and grand it once was. When people speak of it, they do so in hushed whispers, like they’re talking about a frightening story around a campfire. There’s a morbid history there, apparently.Peter isn’t interested in learning it. What matters is that it is derelict enough for him to afford it with his new budget, there’s no neighbours around for miles, and most importantly of all, people avoid it like the plague due to said morbid history. He really appreciates that in a home. He buys it.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Series: crumbling mansions and the people trapped in them [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922395
Comments: 116
Kudos: 245





	1. an overgrown, abandoned thing

Peter decides that it’s time to get some distance from the family. Not that they’ve ever been clingy before, and he manages to get a really wonderful amount of distance from society in general for months at a stretch with his job as a ship captain. That is, until now. It hadn’t ever really occurred to him that he could lose that job, until Nathaniel reminded him who bought that ship for him, and paid his crew members for him. 

Said ship and crew members are currently effectively being held as hostages against him, in exchange for him finally ‘growing up, settling down, and producing some _damned_ heirs already, Peter.’ The family has suddenly become much more overbearing. It’s as if Peter crossed some sort of invisible line once he reached the age of fifty, and now everyone’s _very_ eager for him to get married and fill some proper wife up with babies before his cock loses the ability to rise. Blah blah keep the direct bloodline and line of inheritance clear and pure blah blah. 

There had even been meetings with women of apparently acceptable standards arranged for him, all of them neatly penned down in a schedule in Nathaniel’s neat penmanship, left out on Peter’s desk for him to find. 

Long story short, Peter will not be getting his ship back. 

_The Tundra_ was where he spent the majority of his time. He was on the sea more often than he was on land. When he was on land, that usually meant that he was visiting home for a funeral or some such, and so he would be staying at Moorland House, his large and cavernously empty childhood home. 

Obviously, that’s not an option any longer, so it’s time for him to get a place of his own that isn’t a drifting ship, at the grand age of fifty. Everyone has to leave the nest eventually, ha. At the very least, he hasn’t been cut off from the Lukas purse strings entirely. Just to the point that he can’t buy something as magnificent as _the Tundra._ Not that he wants any ship but her, and if he _can’t_ have her, then-- well. 

Peter decides to move somewhere landlocked. Somewhere far away from Moorland House. Nathaniel seems to be sure that Peter’s bluffing, or that he’ll get tired of not having access to the sea and come running back soon given time. 

Peter tries to imagine himself with a wife and children. He doesn’t have to be involved in their lives in any significant way. Both of his parents had managed to avoid it, after all. He tries to picture it. 

Picture it. 

He comes to a decision: he is not bluffing, and he will not change his mind. Peter moves. 

There is a small, quaint town, and overlooking it is a hill. On top of that hill, is a vast, sprawling estate. It is an overgrown, abandoned thing, which is strange for how obviously beautiful and grand it once was. When people speak of it, they do so in hushed whispers, like they’re talking about a frightening story around a campfire. There’s a morbid history there, apparently. 

Peter isn’t interested in learning it. What matters is that it is derelict enough for him to afford it with his new budget, there’s no neighbours around for miles, and most importantly of all, people avoid it like the _plague_ due to said morbid history. He really appreciates that in a home. He buys it. 

Elias… gets used to the pain. It takes a long, long time, because the thorns keep _shifting,_ squeezing and driving into his flesh and ripping it up every time he starts to acclimate even a little. Like the thorns can _sense_ him adjusting, and don’t want it. For all he knows, that’s exactly what’s happening. He was never an expert on magic. He didn’t even quite believe that it _existed_ until… until. 

But he gets used to the pain, whether or not the thorns want it. They move and twist and wring blood out of him like a dirty rag, but it doesn’t matter. It all becomes the same, after a while. He stops thrashing and struggling against it, stops screaming. It becomes something he can breathe through. 

It still hurts. It still hurts more than anything in the world has ever hurt him, but he breathes through it anyways. 

Something that doesn’t change is the fact that he can’t move. He’s _stuck,_ rooted to the ground as helplessly as a tree. He kneels right where he was first cursed, where he was last a free human being, in his garden. He watches it grow around him slowly, day by day, week by week, month by month. He watches the grass grow long and wild, unsightly wildflowers and weeds sprouting up around him, the artfully curated climbing ivy crawling further and further along his home, unchecked, crumbling delicate curling masonry underneath it. 

He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t sleep, he thinks. Sometimes his mind just… drifts. It still hurts. He always hurts. 

Despite all of this, he keeps living. He doesn’t die. He can see the knife he dropped what feels like a lifetime ago now, the blade rusting in the grass. It’s only feet away, but he can’t reach it. The thorns stop him, vines tightening and restraining him whenever he tries to reach out. He’d use it to… he’d hack the vines away, yes. Pry the thorns out of his flesh. He’d survive that, wouldn’t he? He’s shed more blood than one body can possibly contain. He endures. He heals. He lives, no matter how agonizing it is. 

Rain falls from the sky, and he can somehow feel it soaking into the dirt underneath him, into his _roots._ The sun shines down on him. The wind blows. Fucking _birds_ perch on him, sometimes, until he manages to startle them away. 

The seasons pass. He sees no one. He can see the village distantly, from where he’s trapped. He can see small dots moving amongst the streets, people. He can see smoke drifting up from chimneys. They’re there. They’re just… ignoring him. Pretending like he and his entire estate just don’t exist. 

He hopes that that entire village burns down some day. He’ll have the perfect view for when it does happen. 

He can’t quite remember what had happened, directly after he’d first been cursed. How everyone had reacted, how quickly they left, what happened to Jon and the witch. He can’t remember what happened after for days, weeks. The pain had been too new then, unfamiliar and blinding, overwhelming, whiting out every single other thought in his head for a long, long time. Crawling back to coherent thought had been a slow process. 

Not that it’s done him much good. 

Elias kneels. Elias is stuck. Elias is in pain. 

Seasons come and go. Winters hurt the most, leaving him feeling numb and drowsy in the worst sort of way. Years pass like that, years and years. And in all of that time, not a single person dares to approach his estate, as if what has happened to him might be contagious. 

Until one day one person _does._

Peter doesn’t bring any servants with him. He has enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life, but having a staff is pushing it a bit. More importantly, he doesn’t have the money to hire a _disciplined_ staff that knows they shouldn’t be seen or heard. The help at Moorland House had been like ghosts. Their footsteps went unheard, muffled by the carpet, and they always managed to be in another room than their employers without having to be warned. Dinner appeared on a tray by his door whenever he felt hungry as if by magic, and he would only notice it by the smell of freshly cooked food. He could put down a glass once he’d drained it and simply forget that it ever existed, and be assured that the next time he came into that room, it would be gone. 

Peter isn’t interested in having any servants at all, if they can’t hold themselves to that standard. He’s had to visit other peoples homes, a few times in his life, and the maids and butlers and servants had just… they’d just _been there,_ plain to see. Dusting a mantle or pouring a drink, walking through the hall. They’d even speak to their employers sometimes, a polite ‘yes sir’ or ‘no madam’ or ‘there is someone waiting for you in the lounge, my lord.’ They were just _people_ living in their _houses._ Permanent house guests. Never alone. The idea of it almost gives him hives. 

Peter will simply have to make do without servants. It’s not worth it. It’s fine. How hard can it be? All of the commoners do it. 

So, Peter has to carry his own luggage. He tries to hire someone to drive him up the hill in a carriage, because the hill is steep, and he’s packed his entire life up. Which is in the end only two trunks, but still. It’s unwieldy. 

After some reassessment-- it’s a small town-- he tries to hire someone to drive him up in their _cart._

After some more reassessment, he hikes up how much he’s offering for the ride. It takes more coin than he expects to make one of the peasants finally bend enough to drive him up to his new home. And even then, they’re unwilling to drive him _all_ of the way there. Worst of all, they try to _talk_ to him on the way there. 

“You don’t want to live there, milord,” the peasant says. Peter isn’t a lord, but he doesn’t care to correct him. “That place is wicked.” 

“Your advice is noted,” he says cheerfully, willing for the ride to be over already. Maybe he should’ve just walked after all, back ache be damned. 

“Elias Bouchard used to live there,” the driver says, urgent and grave. Peter swallows the urge to tell him to shut up. “With his betrothed. But then a witch fell in love with Bouchard’s betrothed, and he cursed the man so he could have him for himself. He still haunts the--” 

“Did the witch curse Elias or the betrothed?” he asks a little bit curiously. 

The driver cuts himself off. “What?” 

“You were vague. Did the witch curse the betrothed to fall in love with him or something, or did the witch curse whatever his name was so he wouldn’t be able to stop him as he stole his fiance away?” He imagines a man standing at an altar being turned into a frog, and said frog angrily trying to hop after a witch with a groom slung over his shoulder. It’s a bit amusing to picture. 

“I-- the latter. Sir, no one dares walk upon those grounds. Who knows what danger lurks there, on the lands of a man cursed by a jealous witch? Some groups tried to explore it, years ago, to see if it was safe, but they couldn’t even come close without hearing a _terrible_ screaming.” 

“I don’t hear any screaming,” he says dismissively. He’s run into this sort of thing before. Sailors on his ship or at port murmuring to each other about mermaids, harpies, selkies, monsters, what have you. Peter has been a sailor for decades, and he’d never seen a single thing like that during his travels. It’s pure superstition. Just people spooking each other with scary stories to have something to talk about. 

“What-- ho! Stop!” the driver says, reining in his horses, pulling their canter to a stop. They’ve apparently drifted too far towards Peter’s destination for his comfort while he was distracted with trying to warn Peter away from it. “This is as far as I’m willing to go,” he says. “Please, sir, for the last time I must implore you--” 

“Thank you for your help,” he says, setting down a handful of coins next to where the man is sitting. He gets up. “I can get my luggage myself.” 

“God have mercy on your soul,” he says, and signs the cross. 

He really, really can’t wait to be alone in his new home. 

He gets his luggage and hauls it as best as he can the rest of the way up to the broad, shallow steps leading to the front doors of his home. The driver urges his horses away, back into the town, like something’s going to try and chase him if he doesn’t disappear quickly enough. Peter is cheered at the sight of his urgency. If that’s how desperately everyone in town wants to avoid his home, then his privacy is more or less assured. Moving into a haunted-- or cursed, to be more exact-- home is clearly turning out to be a stroke of genius on his part. 

He takes out the key that he’d been given when he’d bought the estate. He twists it, and pushes the door open, which groans like a giant reluctant to be woken up. 

A plume of dust rolls out, and he sneezes. 

Looking inside of the entryway, the place looks… well, abandoned. The broad, tall windows capture his attention first. There’s a crawling ivy that covers the outside of the building, and the way they’re covering the windows is doing something interesting to the lighting. It has turned the entire place darker, even though it is the height of summer now, but the sunlight that spills through the gaps in the greenery are all the brighter for it, lighting up thick shafts of golden dust floating in the air. 

Peter can handle this. So what if the place is a bit of a mess? It’s not like he’s planning to have any guests over. It has a roof and no one dares approach the place. That’s all he needs. 

Peter gets himself settled. He finds a suitable bedroom, and sets his luggage in it. The wardrobes are already full with someone else’s clothes-- too small for him to wear, not that they’re his style anyways-- but that’s fine. He’s used to living on a ship, so he can live out of his luggage cases for now. He’ll just… burn those other clothes eventually, or something. He wants this bedroom, anyways. He’s been in enough mansions to recognize the master bedroom when he sees it. 

Plus, the view’s pretty good. It’s not the familiar rolling waves of the ocean, but the garden here is beautiful, in a way. Similar to the mansion itself, once clearly a grandiose, beautiful place, now abandoned to be overtaken by nature and neglect. He can almost see how the garden had once looked, how it had been tamed and cultivated. It’s grown wild now, the plants overflowing, all out of neat order. Flourishing as messily as they like. 

Peter sort of likes it. A garden that clearly hasn’t seen the tending hands of a human being in many years. What nature looks like, without a person there to interfere, to try and coax it into ordered beauty. It looks all the better for the fact that it clearly once _had_ had people to tend to it, but now they’re all gone. Vanished, like they’d never been there in the first place. Clearly, the garden that they’d worked so hard on hadn’t mattered _that_ much to them in the end, if they’d just up and abandoned it. 

And then he sees a faint movement down in his garden as he watches. He frowns, and peers closer. Is it an animal? Something rustling around in the underbrush? No. It’s-- 

No, that can’t be right at all. Peter goes to investigate. 

The thorns have managed to rake across some nerves in a way that makes him _twitch,_ like a fish on a line, and Elias is entertaining himself by gritting his teeth and refusing to make any noises. He doesn’t like the way he sounds, when the thorns manage to rip some vocalization out of his throat. He despises hearing it. 

Over the soft, quiet noises of his grinding teeth, the blood rushing in his ears, his racing heartbeat, his sporadic gasps for air, and thorns slowly and inevitably ripping through his flesh like barbed wire, there’s the noise of something approaching. 

Sometimes, animals approach him. When he’s being quiet, and isn’t twitching too much. If it’s a predator, he’s going to have to shout it away so it won’t try and take a bite out of what it registers as weak and dying prey. Bite at the air like a feral thing, baring his teeth in threat. It’s undignified, but at least something to do. 

A man pushes his way past foliage, and looks at him. Elias is so stunned that he just _stares_ for a long moment. The man is tall and broad, in a way that makes him look like he was born to lift barrels. His eyes are slate gray, his hair a lighter version of the color. He’s dressed finely, but in a relaxed manner, his collar casually unbuttoned, no vest or jacket on him, and wearing practical boots. He’s on the older side of middle aged, his face gently lined and weathered, in the way that some sailors that Elias has seen have looked. 

In that breathless, stunned moment, the thorns catch him off his guard for the first time in a long while. They _squeeze_ down on him, as if sensing that he isn’t braced for pain for the first time in years, and a hoarse cry rips out of him. 

“Huh,” the man says. “Not all nonsense, then.” 

Elias pants for air, for the strength to lift his head back up instead of leaving it hanging like a penitent. He is used to pain. He is more used to pain than anyone else alive, he’s willing to bet. He lifts his head and looks at the man once again. 

Yes, he’s definitely real. He looks solid, and like a complete stranger. Too specific and yet unfamiliar for him to be something concocted by his own mind. He hasn’t gone mad. Elias has stayed horribly, stubbornly sane for every single miserable second that he’s been trapped here, and he’s not going to let that change, no matter how much a relief howling madness may be. He is sane. He is reasonable. He is rational. 

There is a man standing in front of him. 

“You,” he rasps. “Cut me free of these thorns.” 

His voice is a mess from all of the screaming he’s done over the years. It _hurts_ to speak, and there aren’t even any thorns lining the inside of his throat. And from disuse as well. He will not speak out loud to himself, like a madman. He won’t. 

The man tilts his head at him and… considers him. He doesn’t back away in fear, or rush forwards in a panic to help him, or even ask with fright what he is, what’s happened to him. 

“I suppose I should,” he says eventually. “So you can leave my home.” 

“... Excuse me?” Elias asks. 

“I like my solitude,” the man says, sounding perfectly calm and reasonable about it. “So if you’ve been… lashed down here into the earth by some sort of curse, then I’ll help cut you loose, and you can go and leave me alone.” 

“This is _my_ home,” he says, feeling a baffled sort of indignance bubbling up into him. 

“No, you’re mistaken,” the man says pleasantly, as if he’s not standing before a kneeling and bleeding stranger. “I signed a contract, and handed over quite a large amount of gold. My name is on the deed.” 

No, Elias thinks. This is _my_ home. No one else gets to sell it. It’s _mine,_ you thief, you trespasser, you _squatter._

He bites all of that back, just as he has so many screams and cries of agonies in the past. All of that can wait until this bastard can just cut him loose. Freedom is so, so close. Like everything else has ever since he was cursed, it tastes like blood. 

“There is a knife,” he says instead, gesturing with his head, even as the movement makes the thorns tear at him. “Just in the grass there.” 

“Ah, convenient,” the man says, and bends down to pick it up where it has laid in the grass for so long, just out of Elias’ reach. It’s so easy for him that it sets a brief, murderous fire ablaze in his chest. He swiftly stomps it out. Now is not the time. Now is not the time for anything that might jeopardize this. 

The man takes a knee in the grass next to him, and worms the rusty blade of the knife underneath a vine wrapped taught around his skin, cutting off his circulation and sending trickles of blood down his arm. The edges of the knife catch at his skin, but he doesn’t flinch or hiss at him to be more careful. It’s nothing, after everything. The man braces himself where he kneels, and pulls the knife outwards, the sharp edge angled towards the vine, trying to cut through it. 

The blade may be blunt by now, but the man is strong. After a few moments of straining against the thick, solid vine, the knife slices and tears through it, cutting it roughly. 

Elias _screams,_ curling up where he kneels until his forehead is planted against the ground. 

“Noisy,” the man says. Elias feels the knife start to slide underneath another vine, to repeat the process. He flinches away as much as the thorns allow him. “Stop moving.” 

It feels like one of his _limbs_ has been severed. Despite everything, that is one pain that he has not experienced yet. God, no, that means-- that means-- 

“They’re a part of me,” he gasps. “The thorns are a part of me.” 

That is a possibility that he’d never considered. Or never _wanted_ to consider, despite the way he can feel roots-- _his_ roots-- going down into the ground, absorbing the moisture that trickles down into the soil after every rainfall. 

People can survive amputating a limb, can’t they? He can survive this agony, and be able to walk again, can’t he? 

_No,_ every single fiber in his being cries out. _It’s too much. You can’t. You won’t._

It astonishes him sometimes, how even after everything, he still doesn’t want to die. How much he’s willing to go through just to survive. 

“Stop,” he chokes out. “Stop-- stop cutting them.” 

_Stop cutting me._

The man stops, reluctantly. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes,” he says, and tries not to think about what this means, that he can’t just have himself cut free. That this agony is a _part_ of him now, as much as his arms or legs or heart. 

“I don’t-- oh.” 

“What?” he pants, and finds enough will power to move his head to the side to try and look up at him. The man is looking at the vine that he’s already cut. 

Elias looks as well. It’s knitting itself back together already, faster than any natural plant ever could. A shaky laugh rattles out of him, and he harshly bites it off halfway through. He will not laugh at this. He will not go mad. 

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” the man complains. _Inconvenient._ Elias truly wouldn’t mind seeing him dead, and he doesn’t even know his name. “By the time I’d get to the last vine, the other ones would already be putting themselves back together.” 

Like trying to build a house out of sand, when the tide is coming in only a few hours. Or forming a shape with soap bubbles. All of one's efforts doomed to crumble in short time. 

“How unfortunate,” he hisses, and he spares a moment to _hate_ that damned witch. He’s spent many, many of his hours thinking of nothing else, of how much he _despises_ him. Not much else to do, after all. 

“Annoying,” the man agrees. “Say, how much do you scream?” 

“What?” 

“You seem loud, so far. Is that a frequent thing?”

Elias stares at him for a long moment. He’s trying to assess how much of a nuisance Elias is, he realizes with an almost transcendent rage and incredulity. Like asking if the neighbours are particularly rowdy, and how daring the local wildlife is. 

“You’re going to _stay_ here?” he demands. 

“Well, I’ve already bought the place,” the man says with a shrug. “And now that I think about it, the realtor seemed a bit desperately relieved about it. I probably won’t be getting a refund. You stay in one place, though, so maybe as long as you’re not too loud, I guess it’s not so bad.” 

Elias feels his arms strain against the thorns wrapped around him, as if he wants to snatch the knife out of the man’s hands and shove it into his throat. It only drives the sharp points deeper into him, of course. 

“No,” he says flatly. “Move. This is _my_ home.” 

The man gives him a jovial, teasing smile, as if this is all a grand joke. “Make me.” 

Elias opens his mouth, and the sheer amount of outrage he feels makes it so that nothing but a quiet exhalation comes out. 

The man chuckles, gets up, and leaves. There is nothing Elias can do to stop him, of course. 


	2. gardening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter may have made a bit of a mistake, buying a new home without seeing it first.

Peter may have made a bit of a mistake, buying a new home without seeing it first. It’s his first time buying a home for himself, so he thinks he should be excused for stumbling across some of the apparent pitfalls, but. 

The man-plant-creature-thing won’t stop screaming. Not constantly, but  _ often. _ It doesn’t even sound like it’s out of pain, sometimes. Like it’s making noise just for the sake of making noise. It makes it difficult to sleep, to put it mildly. 

On the dawn of the next morning, he comes out into the garden. He doesn’t head towards the noise. Instead, he looks for a garden shed first. It should be subtle and tucked away somewhere it can’t be unsightly and obtrusive. He looks in the dark corners that are tucked away behind trees, and finds it eventually. It isn’t even locked. He goes inside, waving thick cobwebs away until he finds it. Taking it, he heads back out, this time towards the annoyance. It's time to do some gardening. He's never done it before himself, but it can't be that hard. 

The plant creature stops shouting once he notices Peter approaching. He takes some amount of satisfaction at the look that briefly flickers over its face once it notices what he’s holding. 

Peter holds out the shovel, as if presenting it. “New plan,” he says. “How about I replant you? Off of my property, somewhere in the woods. I’m sure you’ll like it just fine there.” 

The plant creature bares its teeth at him.  _ “My  _ property.” 

“Whatever you say,” he says cheerfully, and then digs the shovel into the earth around the plant thing. 

After a while, the creature does a full body jerk, like something has struck its very bones. Or its roots, perhaps. It’s interesting how it doesn’t take the opportunity to be a menace and screech at him. Instead, it clenches its jaw and  _ glares  _ at him. Why? It seems to  _ enjoy  _ being loud. 

It doesn’t matter. Peter simply has a pest on his new property to take care of. It’s no different from setting out rat traps on  _ the Tundra.  _

He keeps digging. The plant thing keeps glaring at him like it’s hoping it can kill with sheer force of will. It’s one of the more tolerable interactions Peter has had with someone. 

And then it tries to speak to him, unfortunately. He really does wish that people would stop doing that. Just because he happens to exist in the same vicinity as someone does not mean that he’s laying out an invitation for conversation. 

“What’s your name?” it says, its voice tense and clipped around the repressed pain. 

“Peter Lukas,” he says, because that is a nicely impersonal question, really. When he does have to talk to people he really does prefer it when it sticks to a soulless script that he can just rattle off. It’s much easier. He follows the script. “And you?” 

“You don’t even know the name of the owner of the property that you’re squatting on?” he asks derisively. 

He tries to remember. He honestly isn’t all that good with names. Or faces. Not that he’s ever _ tried _ to be good at those. “Something like… Edward Bach?” 

_ “Elias Bouchard.” _ Oh, that _ really _ annoyed him. Peter takes note. 

And then the plant thing-- Elias-- sharply inhales, visibly biting back a noise of pain. Peter looks down. Yes, he’s more or less finished here. He drops the shovel to the ground, and looks for a place on Elias that isn’t covered in thorns that might give him some reasonable leverage. He leans down and hooks his arms underneath Elias’ arm, and pulls. Elias makes a  _ noise,  _ dragged out of him past clenched teeth like something deeply unwilling. 

Peter does not successfully tear him out of the ground. He resettles his feet, bending his knees, finding better leverage. He _ pulls.  _

Elias makes a choking noise, like he doesn’t have the breath to make the sound that his body is trying to squeeze out of him. Peter’s hand slips, and he cuts himself on one of Elias’ thorns. He hisses, letting him go. 

Taking a step back, he surveys his work. He hasn’t been able to budge Elias an  _ inch.  _

“Hmm,” he says, dissatisfied. He thought that he’d managed to sever all of the things' roots. He’d gone in a careful circle, and he’d _ felt _ the shovel go through the resistance of roots. He’d seen the creature wince and try to hide it each time. 

“You idiot,” Elias seethes. “They’re just reattaching right away, like the vines. You  _ can’t _ get rid of me.” 

He frowns down at it. Elias is covered in his own blood, and there’s pain sweat on his forehead clear to see. And yet he still finds the strength to bare his teeth at Peter in a vicious smile at the relatively small loss he’s suffered. 

“Maybe fire,” he says thoughtfully, and the smile freezes over. Oh, that feels rather satisfying, actually. 

With that, he picks up the shovel and leaves. 

Elias refuses to be cowed.  _ He  _ doesn’t let himself be controlled by threats and fear. Peter Lukas is an idiot and a thief, and he won’t ever give him the satisfaction of being convenient and quiet as he  _ steals his home.  _

He  _ stews  _ over that. That someone had the gall to sell his home,  _ his home,  _ they had no  _ right. _ Selling it, like he isn’t still here. Like he’s not a factor to even be considered. 

He’s still here. People might want to ignore him, to act like he doesn’t exist, but he won’t let them. He won’t let Peter Lukas act like he doesn’t exist, fire or no. He doesn’t believe that it would kill him for a moment, honestly. Peter’s attempts to remove him are only impressing upon him just how durable he really is now. So that he can be hurt as much as the curse wants, without it ever having to end due to something as silly as a little blood loss. 

He would burn, but he wouldn’t die. He’s confident of that. He doesn’t want that, but he won’t let the threat of it control him. Let the bastard try it and see where it gets him. Then he’d  _ really  _ have a noisy pest to deal with. An eternally screaming, burning man covered in thorns and roses. At least until the next heavy rainfall. It would be exactly what the moron deserves. 

Peter wants for him to be quiet, ignorable? The world wants to move on like he doesn’t exist any longer? Fuck that. 

Elias screams. He screams and he shouts and he’s  _ loud, _ as loud as he wants to be, loud even when the pain he’s feeling isn’t that remarkable compared to what he’s felt before, really. He doesn’t try and clench his jaw and hold his silence just as a small, small way to keep some of his dignity. He wants Peter Lukas out of his home. 

(Except for when Peter hurts him himself. Severing his roots with a shovel and firm motions. Then he’ll hold his silence. Won’t give him the satisfaction, won’t let him know that he’s succeeding, that he’s hurting him. Screaming out of spite and screaming out pain that he can’t stop are two very, very different things.) 

Peter indulges in an old hobby, from when he was a child. Exploring. He’d always loved walking the endless grounds and hallways of his childhood home when he was young. It was so vast and sprawling, there always seemed to be more to find. And best of all, it all felt like something private. Every discreet nook and cranny something forgotten and abandoned, known only by him. He’d liked that. It probably hadn’t been the case, looking back, but he’d liked it. 

And he has a new home now. A new vast sprawling estate to explore and discover, full of dusty, forgotten rooms that are his, all his. The garden, admittedly, is currently housing a particularly noisy pest that’s ruining the calm quiet of this place, but there’s still plenty of mansion left to cover. He doesn’t have to go into the garden. And that’s how Peter makes a wonderful discovery: if he wanders deep enough into the mansion, the creature’s obnoxious noise eventually gets muffled to the point of going completely silent. 

The idea of Elias stubbornly shouting to an audience of no one but himself is mildly amusing, and he lets it cheer him as he wanders the halls of his new home. 

There are many rooms here, of course. Many small discoveries to be had. The parlor. A library, all of the shelves strangely barren, which he doesn’t really care about. The kitchens, which is good to know. Peter’s been eating hardtack for the last few days, which while being something that he’s somewhat used to thanks to his life as a seaman, isn’t something that he’s ever particularly relished. Many, many, many guest rooms that will absolutely never see use, if Peter has anything to say about it. Which he does, as the owner of this place. The servant’s quarters. And from there… oh, he’s seen these before. Servant’s corridors tucked away behind the walls, cramped and dark, to keep them nicely out of view and out of mind as they bustle along. He’s always appreciated their existence. 

Peter follows the servants corridors, taking twists and turns at random whim. He’s intrigued when the corridors go downwards, deep, deeper, until they’re more tunnels than corridors. Somewhere dark and quiet, underneath the ground. There are doors down here too, and he entertains himself by opening them and seeing what’s inside. Wine, some ruined potatoes, rope, random supplies, old furniture covered in cloth, storage, boring, boring, boring… 

Some of the doors are locked, but honestly, everything down here is so old and neglected that it really doesn’t take much of a shove from him to get any door to surrender to him in a racket of vaguely damp splinters. 

He forces another such locked door open, not expecting anything special or exciting from it-- 

Oh. 

Well, that _ is  _ a bit more exciting. 

Elias hears footsteps approach. He braces himself for matches, tinder and kindling, to not let his expression so much as flicker at the sight of them. 

Peter arrives, not carrying matches, tinder, or kindling. Elias feels his mouth fall open at what he  _ is _ carrying, and hates himself a bit for it. Distantly. Mostly, he’s just shocked and baffled. 

Peter casually tosses a human skull down at the ground in front of Elias. 

“What’s this about?” Peter asks. 

“What?” Elias asks. It’s the only thing he can think to say, in the face of having, again, a  _ human skull _ thrown at him and Peter looking at him as if he’s waiting for some sort of answer.  _ He’s _ the one with questions? “Where did you  _ get _ this?” 

“My basement,” he says, and honestly, he’s going out of his way to say  _ my  _ basement, he must be, the absolute bastard. 

“What the hell is a human skull doing in my basement?”  _ He  _ certainly hadn’t put it there. He’d remember that, surely. 

“Oh, it was a whole skeleton,” Peter says, as if that clarifies fucking anything. “I just brought the skull, bringing all of it seemed like a bit of a handful.” 

“I--  _ where _ in the basement,” he asks, exasperated. 

“In a room,” says Peter. 

“Oh! A _ room!  _ How illuminating.” 

Peter picks the skull up from the ground and throws it straight at Elias this time. It’s not even a hard throw, just a lazy toss. It bounces against his head, and clatters back to the ground. It won’t even leave a bruise. He is  _ indignant.  _

“It was in a room behind a locked door,” Peter says, with a bit of a satisfied smile as Elias gives him his filthiest glare. “There was a bed in there. It seemed like a strange place to put one.” 

“Oh,” he says, realizing. “The prisoner.” 

He’d completely forgotten her. He doesn’t even remember her name, but then again, she hadn’t been particularly important, beyond the leverage she gave him over the best hunter in the village. It hadn’t really occurred to him that there wouldn’t be anyone to know to let her out, if everyone decided that his estate was suddenly too cursed to risk even approaching, nevermind the fact that he’s the one who’s cursed, not his property. 

The huntswoman wouldn’t have been around to let her out either. He’d never let her find out that her dear liability was hidden within the very same building that she was residing in, which he’d found to be fairly amusing at the time. If she had even still been alive then. She’d never appeared when he’d called her to heel, during the wedding. He had, after a few months and years of considering it, eventually come to the conclusion that the witch had  _ done  _ something to her to get her out of the way before he came to confront Elias himself. Killed her, most likely, or cursed her as well. He doesn’t particularly care what particular terrible fate befell her. What matters is that she was taken out as a tool and a resource, when he needed her most. 

He dreams of one day making that witch  _ suffer.  _

“Keeping prisoners?” Peter asks. “You’re not as much of a tragic victim as people would like to claim for the sake of a good story, then.” 

“Oh?” That intrigues him. He has wondered, over the years, exactly how much the public knows about everything that happened. If a part of why he’s been left alone for so long was out of condemnation as well as fear. 

“Wicked witch fell in love with your fiance, cursed you, stole them for himself, yadda yadda. A fairly boring story. And you don’t do much in it, do you? You just stand around and get cursed.” 

“You sound like an idiot,” Elias informs him. He had done a touch more than just _ stand around and get cursed.  _ He had wondered if Jon would try and tell the townspeople about the true series of events, instead of the one that was easy to assume based on only a superficial knowledge of what had happened. Apparently, he hadn’t. That’s… insulting, actually. He hadn’t even bothered to drag his reputation through the mud when he had the chance? He’d just  _ left,  _ as if Elias were nothing more than an afterthought? 

A dark, bitter hatred so familiar that it’s almost as well known to him as his own heartbeat throbs through his body. The vines shift, the thorns cutting through him. He grits his teeth through the pain. Screaming to annoy is one thing, screaming because he can’t help it is another. 

“And you sound like an animal getting slaughtered,” Peter says cheerfully, and then he picks the skull back up and looks at it consideringly. “Maybe I should put this on my mantelpiece,” he says. “As decoration. That’s the sort of thing people do, isn’t it? Spruce the place up a bit.” 

And he turns to leave. 

Elias doesn’t know why he says it. 

“What happened to burning me alive?” 

He snaps his mouth shut as soon as the words leave him. What is he saying? Does he _ want _ to burn? No, of course he doesn’t. What’s wrong with him? He’s always so careful with his words, to only ever say exactly what he means to, each word weighed and considered in advance. 

It must be because it has been so many years since he last spoke to someone. Yes, he’s out of practice. That must be it. 

Peter looks back at him. “Oh,” he says, and shrugs. “I forgot about it.” 

He leaves without waiting for a response. 

He forgot. 

Elias has been preparing himself to be set ablaze for a day and a night and he  _ forgot. _ As if it were an idle, empty threat, something he came up with on a whim and easily allowed to float out of the damned  _ sieve  _ of his head. What a-- he’s an absolute-- 

_ “Idiot!” _ he shouts after him. In the distance, he thinks he just barely hears a chuckle. Elias breathes loud and heavy as if he’s exerted himself. 

He’s shouting childish, ineffectual insults like he’s a helpless, powerless thing, unable to do anything to the forces in the world set against him but to lose his temper and make a fool of himself. That’s not true. That’s not what he is. He’s not. He’s intelligent, he’s perceptive, and he can talk circles around anyone he likes, especially someone as idiotic as Peter Lukas. He just has to calm down and think-- 

The thorns tear through him, and he’s struck still and silent for a long moment that could be but a second or an hour as he rides out the wave of agony. When it’s finally done, he goes lax against the vines that hold him in place, panting for air. 

He wants to stand up and follow Peter. He wants to shout at him, hit him, or better yet, talk him into doing something stupid that Elias can leverage for his own gain. But he can’t. He’s stuck here, alone, and for now there is nothing in the world that he can do to affect anything or anyone at all. If the universe is a pond, he is something that can create no ripples in its surface. Not right now. 

This has been the case for many, many years. For some reason, it’s not a familiar, bitter ache any longer, but suddenly something fresh that stings and burns. Like talking to Peter for even a moment had made him briefly forget it. That  _ offends _ him. Someone that-- so-- someone like him shouldn’t be able to affect him in any way. 

Elias decides that he  _ hates _ Peter Lukas. 


	3. cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooking… may be slightly more difficult than anticipated.

Peter is beginning to run out of hardtack. It’s time to figure out the kitchen. 

He’s never really had to cook his own meals before. As a child and a young man, perfectly prepared meals had appeared outside his door or at a table while he had his back turned like magic. Later in life, after he’d taken to sea life, he’d had an on ship cook to take care of meals for him and his crew. The difference in quality had definitely taken some adjustment time-- apparently, you just can’t make the same sort of meals on a ship as you can in the kitchens of a mansion. But he’s spent more of his life eating ship fare food by now than not, so he’s long since gotten past that by now. Still, he hasn’t ever actually had to make his own meals  _ himself.  _

But how hard can it be? Plenty of people cook, meaning that it’s probably a fairly easy skill to learn. Can’t be that complicated. It’s all just… cutting food and then boiling it or something, right? 

Yes, simple. Peter’s a grown man, an accomplished ship captain. He can figure out  _ dinner.  _

Elias is in the middle of a particularly vicious daydream involving Jon, Peter, and the witch when he’s interrupted by a loud crash of breaking glass. 

“What?” he says to himself, and then louder.  _ “What the hell was that?”  _

_ “Nothing!” _ he hears the cheerful voice of Peter distantly respond. 

“That wasn’t nothing! What did you break?” 

“Just a window! Oh, it’s still on fire.” 

“What!?” 

Peter, the bastard, doesn’t respond. After a long few minutes, the servant’s entrance closest to Elias bursts open, and Peter walks speedily past him without even stopping to acknowledge him while holding a bucket. 

“What did you set on fire?” he calls out after him. “You haven’t even been here a full  _ week _ yet.” 

“Relax, you overgrown rose bush,” he says. “I just had to throw a burning pot out of the closest window. And then it continued to burn.” 

“You threw a  _ burning pot _ into the  _ garden.  _ Where I  _ live.” _

“You think it might set you on fire too? Maybe I should just let it burn for a while longer, then,” he says with a faux thoughtful air to him, but he keeps walking anyways, turning the corner to where Elias can’t see him any longer. Soon, he hears the distinct sound of water splashing over something hot, and he can smell smoke. Soon, Peter comes back with the bucket. 

“What, are you just going to leave the pot there?” 

“I’ll come and get it back at some point, after it’s cooled off,” he says dismissively. 

“What--” Elias says, but he’s cut off by the door closing, Peter disappearing again. He bares his teeth at the closed door, and imagines every single inch of the pain he’s feeling wrapping around that stupid bastard instead. 

Peter suffers a few false starts, and learns a couple quick lessons. Such as: he should’ve cleared the oven of spiders and their cobwebs first. Wood needs to be completely dry to catch flames. He should have a bucket of water standing nearby and ready, just in case. He should have checked that the chimney was unobstructed, the flue open, before he set the fire. Smoke can grow overwhelming very quickly, if contained within one room. Food can go bad quickly, without an ice box or a nice cool basement to be stored in. Food needs  _ some  _ seasoning. Meat needs at the same time more and less time to be prepared than he’s giving it, and he’s not quite sure how to fix that. 

Cooking… may be slightly more difficult than anticipated. At least, it’s not intuitive. Apparently, it’s a  _ skill _ that you have to _ learn _ to  _ get better at. _ That’s inconvenient. Peter may have to hire a cook. 

… Peter really doesn’t want to have to hire a cook. He’ll have to  _ talk  _ to people to hire someone. They’ll be in his home, asking questions, bothering him. A stranger. It doesn’t bear thinking about. 

But at the same time, what else is there to do? He’s hit a wall when it comes to this cooking thing. He can’t seem to make a single thing that isn’t burned or soggy or raw. 

Outside, the annoying bleeding man wrapped in thorns starts screaming again. 

… It’s worth a shot. Can’t hurt, can it? Really, hiring a cook should be the  _ last  _ resort. Peter goes into his garden. 

Elias is panting for breath by the time Peter gets to him. He can  _ see _ the vines moving, which is an interesting sight. They don’t move with the speed of a person or an animal, exactly, but he’s certainly never seen a plant move with such speed either. They sort of… squeeze, almost rhythmically, except it keeps missing a beat here and there, as if it refuses to be predictable. It nearly reminds him of the lapping of waves on the shore, or the thump of a heartbeat. Slow, steady. Unceasing. 

“Evening,” he greets him. 

“What do you want,” he snarls, as if Peter has been doing nothing but hound and badger him for favors since he got here. Honestly, Peter should be the one snarling accusations here. The damned thing won’t shut up. 

“How do you cook?” 

This seems to take the raw, seething wind out of his sails, replacing it with something surprised and a bit confused. “What?” 

“Do you know how?” He doesn’t see what’s so confusing. It’s a very straightforward, simple question. 

“How would _ I _ know?” he demands, sounding perfectly baffled at having been asked. 

“Well, it’s a common skill, isn’t it?” He pauses, suddenly unsure of himself. Is it? He thinks he vaguely remembers something about someone at a party once bragging about how _ their  _ chef graduated from  _ this _ exclusive culinary school. Maybe it is a rare and difficult skill? He’s certainly been having enough difficulty with it. But then how do all of the peasants eat? They can’t possibly be able to afford their own chefs. 

His mouth twists distastefully. He doesn’t enjoy speculating about other people’s lives. 

“I  _ own _ this  _ estate,” _ Elias says, enunciating his words clearly, as if to an idiot. “I haven’t prepared a meal in my life.” 

Oh, right. Making food is a task for poor people, of course. 

“You’re not very useful,” he says, a simple statement of fact, much alike commenting on the weather of the day. He turns to leave. 

“--Perhaps there are some books on the subject in my library,” Elias says, and Peter pauses. “If you need an instruction manual to avoid burning my home down due to your sheer ineptitude then you’re welcome to it.” 

“Your library has been picked clean,” he informs him. 

It’s not like Elias had been moving before, tied and rooted down as he is. He somehow contrives to go very still anyways, though. “What?” 

“You didn’t know?” he asks him blithely. “Someone must’ve snuck through the backdoor while you were out here yowling, then. Or maybe just the front door. It’s not like you can see it from here, can you?” 

He opens his mouth. Doesn’t say anything. Peter shrugs, and then leaves. 


End file.
